Our primary interests lie in the search for novel antibiotics to treat drug-resistant microbial infections. The World Health Organization considers antibiotic-resistant infections to be “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today.” Drug-resistant microbes result in more hospitalizations, raise the risks associated with surgery and cancer chemotherapy, and increasingly threaten public health in Canada and around the globe. In 2017, we joined the established team of experts of the IIDR who probe new antimicrobial strategies, develop assays, and screen large compound libraries to find new molecules that kill drug-resistant microbes. These molecules become the starting points for medicinal chemistry research and pre-clinical drug development efforts.

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The Magolan Laboratory also partners in drug discovery-themed projects with researchers in a number of other therapeutic areas.